Nvidia research dives into wearable tech

Nvidia research is on hand at Siggraph showing their proof of concept design for near-eye light field displays. The research arm of Nvidia is proposing a near-eye light field display that will enable thin, lightweight head-mounted displays capable of presenting accommodation, convergence, and binocular disparity depth cues. Their research and concept design seems to be in preparation to take Google Glass head on in the wearable technology department.

The prototype display system is setup for users to interact with at Siggraph in the Emerging Technologies pavilion. It is comprised of a custom-fabricated HMD using modified off-the-shelf parts, as well as GPU-accelerated light field renderers (including ray tracing and a “backward compatible” method for existing stereoscopic content). It is comprised of a pair of OLED panels covered with two micro-lens arrays. This approach in design will enable a thin head-mounted display, since the black box containing driver electronics could be waist-mounted with longer OLED ribbon cables.

The team plans to present their research paper during a technical brief later this year at Siggraph Asia. More information about the project can be found